


sparking

by luminessence



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force Ghost Bodhi Rook, Gen, POV Finn (Star Wars), Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Stormtrooper Rebellion, au where bodhi meets finn, tribute to have you heard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 19:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13394868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminessence/pseuds/luminessence
Summary: “This was his first offense,” says Phasma. It wasn’t.Or, long ago, a man sent a pilot off with a secret message for his daughter, with the fate of the galaxy hinged on its delivery. He knew the pilot would do it because there was good and hope and kindness in him. He just needed a nudge, a spark.It’s Bodhi’s turn, now.





	sparking

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to [mari](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bonpelerin/pseuds/bonpelerin), my wonderful, wonderful beta
> 
> set before tfa, during finn's stormtrooper days, in the spirit of the stormtrooper rebellion and the everlasting spark of hope that embodies star wars. i read [peradi's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi) [have you heard](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5798602) (if you haven’t, you must) in one sitting and immediately sat down to write this.
> 
> so: au where bodhi rook still dies, but meets finn anyway

FN-2187 is a stormtrooper.

He’s not sure of much else.

He’s not sure when this started. He won’t call it doubt, because it’s not, but something closer to hesitation, to mulling General Hux’s words over in his head, testing them out for himself. _We will eradicate the Republic!_ FN-2187 mouths them in the darkness of his helmet, and none of them fit quite right.

For a brief and fleeting second, he wonders _why_. Captain Phasma walks past, barks an order, and the thought passes like smoke.

 

//

 

They call him Eight-Seven, because it’s easier to shout than his full designation, easier to pick out instead of a string of numbers. He is Eight-Seven the same way his squadron is Slip and Zeroes and Nines, but in the end, they’re all stormtroopers.

They train, relentlessly. The FN corps are renowned for their sharpshooting and ruthlessness and obedience (obedience is sacred to the stormtroopers, it’s the rungs of their ladder, the only way out other than death).

Phasma pulls him aside one day, as the rest of their squadron marches back to the barracks.

(he risked the mission to save slip)

(again)

“FN-2187,” she says, carefully, like she’s memorizing it. She takes a moment to think, masked by the chrome. (he can feel his pulse hammering in his ears)

“You are an exceptional soldier,” she says. “I want to stress that you would make an admirable officer.”

“Thank you, Captain,” he replies, salutes, turns to go but she isn’t finished yet.

Phasma grabs his arm, pulls him close. “This is your final warning: leave the others behind,” she hisses. “Mercy will be your downfall, FN-2187.”

(what she doesn’t say: kindness is a poison, a weed that we must kill. you must let it die)

She releases him as he mumbles an affirmation, and leaves him standing in the middle of an empty hall. Then, in the corner of his eye, there’s a flicker; he turns, and there is nothing.

 

//

 

It’s not often that he dreams. They’re usually scattered, bright and burning things. Sometimes there are ships in the night sky, sometimes there are hands gripping his that let go when their arms become too short or when their bodies go limp, lit up in the scarlet of blaster fire.

(he wonders if those were his parents. the first order tells them that they are trained from birth, that they have no memory of their family because they belong to the order alone. still, he wonders)

He falls asleep one night on Starkiller Base and opens his eyes to desert sands that stretch to the horizon and back again. He stands in an ancient city, stones older than time, a _something_ he doesn’t know the word for resounding in his bones. Holy ground, he thinks.

“Now,” says a voice, “Please don’t freak out on me.”

Eight-Seven spins, reaching for a blaster that isn’t there, and finds tired eyes (eyes he’s sure he’s seen somewhere, and the only place he can think of is the mirror) staring back at him. The man’s skin is the color of the mountains beyond the walls, his hair peppered gray, tied back, pilot’s goggles sitting on his forehead.

“Who are you?” Eight-Seven demands. “Where am I?”

The man raises his hands, placating. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “My name’s Bodhi. Bodhi Rook, you probably haven’t—”

“ _Where am I?_ ”

“Dreaming,” says Bodhi. “You’re dreaming but I need you to listen to me, just for a—”

He wakes.

 

//

 

He writes it off as stress. Must be his slip-up earlier jarring his nerves, sending his dreams in a wild direction. Yes, that makes sense. It’s easy for him to swallow, to shove to the edges of his mind. 

(but it still manages to cling to him, like dew, like sand, flickers in the corner of his eye)

Two days, two nights.

“Sorry,” says Bodhi, “I’m still getting the hang of this.”

“I don’t understand,” Eight-Seven says, stalks up to the pilot. “I’m _dreaming_. You said I was dreaming.”

“You _are_ dreaming, but it’s still real. Look, this is getting us nowhere.” He extends a hand, no gauntlets, no blaster. “We got off on the wrong foot. Hi, I’m Bodhi.”

(he doesn’t think about how stormtroopers will never have a name, he doesn’t think about how they live and die by their designation, by their number. that’s all they are, after all)

Eight-Seven doesn’t take his hand. “Why am I here?”

Bodhi sighs, rolls his words around before he says them. “Because,” he starts, stops, tries again. His eyes glimmer with determination, with fire. “Because I was just like you, the willing hand of an Empire, and—and I was scared, but someone showed me how to do what’s right. And I did.” (he says it like he can’t quite believe it) “And _so can you_.”

He wakes up. His squadron sleeps around him, filling bunk after bunk. Slip is two bunks up, one bunk over, and Eight-Seven knows that not a single other person in this room would stop for him. _Mercy will be your downfall_.

He goes back to sleep.

 

//

 

“Are you a ghost?” Eight-Seven says the next time he finds the city. “Is that what this is? I’m being haunted?”

Bodhi laughs. It’s a soft sound, something light and happy. Things in short supply in the Order. “Kind of. Think of this as my unfinished business.”

It’s Eight-Seven’s turn to laugh, disbelievingly. “What, me?”

He looks over and finds himself left alone in the dust.

 

//

 

He doesn’t know if it’s _actually_ against protocol to spend the occasional dream wandering a desert city with a ghost, if something that absurd is written down in the Order’s files.

FN-2187 decides that he’ll keep it to himself, regardless.

 

//

 

They walk through the streets, passing under stone archways and through empty bazaars. The stalls are set up, awnings stretching over spices and fruits and stones, but they are the only two in the whole city.

(it feels like a graveyard)

“Tell me about yourself,” says Bodhi. It pulls him from his thoughts, reminds him that he’s dreaming and doesn’t have to watch for insurgents, ready to fire.

Instead he shrugs. _I’m FN-2187 and I’m a stormtrooper_. It’s the only answer he can give. “There’s really not much to say.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

He doesn’t know. He hasn’t thought about it before. “Blue,” he says. The color of the sky on a bright day, of oceans. The First Order wraps itself in black and white and red; seeing blue means fresh air, means freedom.

(he thinks, briefly, that that realization should not have felt as good as it did, should not have made him glance up to the dream skies and smile at the lack of clouds)

“What about you?”

“I’ve always liked green,” he says. “Probably a habit of living on a desert moon, it’s rare we ever saw any plant life.”

They walk on and settle into the silence. No passerby, no birds screeching from the rooftops, no wind blowing between the buildings.

(no, not a graveyard. a warzone)

“Where are we?” he asks, finally. “This city, I mean?”

Bodhi pauses, doesn’t answer quite yet. “Jedha,” he says, quietly. “Or, what’s left of her.”

He almost doesn’t ask. “What happened?”

The ghost stops, stands for a moment and turns towards the towering spire on the other end of the city, looks out to the statues past the wall, sleeping in the sands. “She died,” he says. “This is my memory of her.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Eight-Seven mumbles. It feels like the right thing to say. He doesn’t point out that Bodhi is crying, or that his own heart aches in an odd, twisting way, and instead they wander on in the silence.

 

//

 

He dreams more and more often, now, and more and more it tastes like treason. He knows the Force isn’t real, that it's the scraps of a dead religion, but he’s not sure how else to explain this. Calling it the Force would be treason just as much.

He wonders if he’s finally cracked.

“Bodhi,” he says, wonders at how a name without a title fits neatly in his mouth, “I need to know. This, all of this—Jedha, these dreams, you—is it real? Did I make all of this up?”

“Does it matter?” Bodhi asks him. He doesn’t know. (he doesn’t think so)

They’re not in the streets today, or at the Temple of the Whills or walking along the ridge of the walls, but inside one of the many buildings. It’s carved from the same stone as the rest, but the way Bodhi moves around in it, fishing out mugs and tea leaves, makes FN-2187 wonder if he once lived here. He wonders if ghosts have homes, and if he’s chosen to come back to this one.

“What if it does?”

Bodhi hands him one of the cups and he sips it gently. It tastes like _ancient_ and _frost_ and _honey_. He watches the steam curl from it and wonders where its taste came from.

“You’re a stormtrooper, right?” says Bodhi, “What do you know of the Empire?”

(what does he know? what did they teach him to believe?) “They say,” he starts, swallows, says again: “They say it was glorious. That it brought peace and prosperity, united the entire galaxy under one banner.”

Bodhi’s face hardens. His fingers tighten around his cup as he stares down into it, as if he were as still and stone as Jedha herself. The tension falls off of him after a moment, spills from his shoulders as he exhales.

“Sounds like a proper soldier,” he murmurs. “Do you know what happened to it?”

Eight-Seven pauses. “It fell,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

Bodhi shakes his head, and gives him the answer: “It _burned_.”

 

//

 

FN-2187 is a stormtrooper. This is something he knows, irrevocably. The same way he knows how to fire a blaster at a moving target and catch them between the eyes, the same way his body knows to snap to attention, to fall into line, to follow orders.

He knows he has always been a stormtrooper, raised from birth to be the hand of the First Order. He is a number and a soldier and nothing more. What is _right_ is obedience.

(what is _wrong_ is disloyalty, wrong is kindness and mercy and this feeling in his chest)

“Why does it matter?” FN-2187 says. He knows it matters. It has to.

“Because—” Eight-Seven sees something light up in Bodhi, as he meets him halfway, as he holds his gaze and his eyes burn bright. “Because fires have to be started,” he says. “Someone has to light it.”

“Who? Who has to light it?”

“Anyone,” says Bodhi, and he’s grinning, beaming like a sun. “Anyone can do it. It’s terrifying and—and takes more courage than you ever thought you had, but it just takes one. Just _one_.”

FN-2187 remembers to breathe, wrapped up in how his chest feels like it’s expanding, how air is suddenly harder to find. “Bodhi,” he says, slowly. “How—”

“Because it’s _me_ ,” he says, and he’s so full of life, as if he’s brimming with energy, as if that fire in his heart is spilling out of him. “Because a long time ago, there was an Imperial pilot who defected so he could help the Rebellion destroy the Death Star, and it was _me_. And I was scared and I never slept well again but we did it.” It falls out of him like an afterthought. “We burned the Empire to the ground.”

 

//

 

He’s slipping. 

He’s spent weeks talking to a dead defector, a once-Imperial pilot, the man who caused the end of the Death Star, of the _Empire_ , and he knows he’s slipping because he doesn’t regret a single moment.

“Why me?” FN-2187 asks. “Why are you telling me any of this?”

His fists curl at his sides and he fights the pricking at his eyes. He doesn’t know what to do anymore. He spent yesterday hyperventilating, nearly shaking under Phasma’s gaze, knowing that Slip is alive because of him. His armor feels like a cage, his blaster doesn’t feel seamless with his hand anymore (it feels like a parasite, eating away at him).

He regrets the words as soon as they tumble out. Bodhi looks at him and FN-2187 watches as his face crumples like glass shattering.

“Because there’s _good_ in you,” he says. He pokes Eight-Seven in the chest, jabs at his heart as his face rebuilds into fury. “Because you care! You’ve saved your friend countless times when no one else would! That pain in your chest is what the First Order exists to kill! They’re not fighting the Republic, they’re fighting _empathy_.”

“Well, I don’t want it!” FN-2187 shoots back, shoves Bodhi, shakes his head. “I don’t want any more stories or—or this _care_. It _hurts_ , it hurts and I don’t know what to do.”

Bodhi lets out a breath, cracks a soft, sad smile, and the dream dissolves.

 

//

 

( _i’m sorry_ )

 

//

 

Tonight, Jedha is not empty.

There are people, all around him. The moon hangs low in the sky—except it doesn’t, _that’s no moon_. Instead, the Death Star looms, a shadow over the holy city.

“What’s going on?” Eight-Seven asks, but Bodhi is nowhere to be found.

The people have stopped, staring up at the sky as they point and gawk and wonder. The thought slides from his mind down his spine, creeping and cold and inevitable. It catches in his stomach, forms a stone:

They’re all going to die.

“EVERYBODY, RUN!” he screams, tearing through the crowd, shoving civilians towards the walls, the homes, anywhere as the sky goes dark. “THERE’S STILL TIME, WE NEED TO—”

Jedha lights up in a sickly, artificial green (the green of bright, bright grass, the green of poison, the green of lightsabers and death), and then there is nothing.

 

//

 

He’s shaken awake, Slip’s hand on his shoulder. “We’re being deployed,” he says, “Captain’s orders.”

Eight-Seven climbs out of his bunk, changes his blacks, slips on his armor, piece by piece. “Where are we going?”

Slip shrugs, pulls on his helmet. “Dunno,” he says. He grabs his blaster, stares at it for a moment, and leaves. Eight-Seven does the same, thinks the same: will they be fighting today? Will they be firing today? (will they be dying today?)

The question is answered quickly: it’s a yes, a horrible and screeching yes as they’re fitted into the ship, packed together, as Phasma’s voice crackles in their helmets: _Round up the civilians, kill all aggressors_.

When they land, they pour out like liquid, spilling into the town, blasters blazing. It’s survival now, as he dodges enemy fire, ducks and weaves to get a better shot. He needs to keep an eye on Slip, though, Slip—

Slip, who he watches take a hit to the chest, go tumbling into the Jakku sand, and Eight-Seven after him. The words catch in his throat, an apology that never makes it out ( _i’m sorry i’m sorry this shouldn’t have happened i always protected you_ ). Slip says it for him, raises his hand only for it to slide across Eight-Seven’s helmet, streaking blood as he dies.

(this is where it gets blurry: where his sight stumbles between Jakku and Jedha, desert cities burning, crumbling, the screaming would be louder than the fires if they weren’t all _dead_. his breath is too quick, his armor too tight, slip is dead _dead dead_ **_dead_** ) 

He finds himself lined up, closing the circle of stormtroopers around the civilians. It takes him a moment but he raises his blaster half-heartedly, trying to catch the air before it escapes him.

He watches as Kylo Ren attacks, swinging his lightsaber, burning bright as it cuts through the man. He watches as the Resistance member is hauled onto Ren’s ship, watches as his squadron opens fire.

He hears Slip in the screaming, sees him in the corpses. Phasma’s voice whispers in his ear: _mercy will be your downfall_. Bodhi Rook, tinted blue, stares at him from the crowd.

He (can’t) doesn’t ( _won’t_ ) fire.

(fn-2187 locks eyes with kylo ren, leader of the knights of ren, staring from one mask to another. everyone has heard the whispers of what he is capable of. everyone fears him for it. but eight-seven can feel his betrayal crackling in the air between them, and he’s not dead yet, so he thinks to ren, if he can truly read minds: _i won’t_ )

 

//

 

He breaks the Resistance pilot out, steals a TIE fighter, and escapes. 

_(we have to blow their cannons!_ says poe, and he remembers his sharpshooting, remembers how the rest of his squad aimed at civilians, and blasts it with his stolen guns. he watches it break and burn into a million pieces, and thinks of ghosts)

**Author's Note:**

> for now this is just a one-shot, but... there is a strong chance i might write more


End file.
